Spam Pollutes More Than Just Our Inboxes

Jacksonville – For a long time it seemed the only positive result of email spam was that it filled electronic inboxes with junk rather than wasting paper showing up through traditional mail. A new study released by anti-virus company McAfee and ICF International implies that spam not only annoys, it is also having a negative impact on the planet.

By examining the actions taken by users on 62 million pieces of spam email sent in 2008, McAfee calculated the electronic energy expended by opening, reading, and deleting these emails. This energy was then determined to leave a lasting carbon footprint on the planet. How much of a footprint? 33 billion kilowatt hours. This is the same amount of electricity used by 2.4 million American home. The green house gas emissions of spam are the same as 3.1million passenger cars. The study suggests the abolishment of spam would lead to a reduction of energy expenditure, but not everyone is in agreement. The study assumes that users would not otherwise be using their computers were it not for deleting spam. As PC World points out, most users keep their systems running on an almost twenty-four basis, with deleting spam having no more an impact than countless Google searches and YouTube downloads.

As mentioned earlier, electronic spam is a replacement for paper junk mail. Is one of these methods deemed more environmentally friendly than the other? Tech News World postulates that junk mail trumps spam when it comes to CO2 emissions due to the creation of the mail, the delivery, and disposal. The eradication of spam could mean a resurgence of paper junk mail.

In the end, the negative consequences of spam reach far beyond simple annoyance. McAfee has been able to quantify and illustrate how even email can impact the environment. The result is a better understanding of energy consumption in the electronic age where paper has been replaced by data.